The present invention relates generally to web portals, and more particularly to mapping a data structure for a web portal.
A web portal is most often a specially designed web page which brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets a portlet, which is a dedicated area on the page for displaying information. Often, the user can configure which portlets to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet “dashboards” for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a uniform way may depend on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often, design emphasis is on a certain theme for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework and/or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.
A portal may use a search engine application programming interface (API) to permit users to search intranet content as opposed to extranet content by restricting which domains may be searched. Apart from this common search engine feature, web portals may offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock quotes, information from databases, and even entertainment content. Portals provide a way for enterprises and organizations to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different web entities at various uniform resource locators (URLs). The features available may be restricted by whether access is by an authorized and authenticated user (employee, member) or an anonymous site visitor.